This is really a question I would love to have answered by Dana White.
When UFC baught Pride which was due in total to the bacxkground of Pride`s finances The always straight talking Dana White made it clear at the press confrenece that Pride would basicly continue and not be just desolvedinot the ufc and so was the case when the UFC owner Lorenzo Fortida spoke of the merger rather than aquesition but in the months that have passed since then Pride FC has been run into the ground .
There has not one single event in JApan since the purchase nor has there been any clear Pride v UFC matchs rather the Pride fighters that signed with the UFC have done just that signed with the ufc as ufc fighters and i think this is a shame .
There are several highly ranked fighters that I think would have loved to represent Pride in a Pride v UFC event namely Wanderlie Silva who always said PRide ws his home and apart from Chuck liddel he wanted to have nothing to do with the ufc. There is a story behind that one but thats for another day.
I was hoping maybe the UFC would adopt prides presentational side like the fighter introductions at the start of an event or the wieght class tournaments - but alas this has all been washed away and is only a memmory .
Who wouldnt pay to watch a 12 man heavywieght tournament spread over three events particapants could be

Let the fans vote on the first round matches and watch it unfold.
These sort of tournaments were great to watch in PRide there was always one of the top guys having an off day and one of the guys you never thaught could win just dropping someone it was fantastic and really exciting coz no matter who you wanted to win you had to keep an eye on the other matches some famous matches from this style of tourmnament included
Kevin Randleman v Crocop KR knocked MC into next week with a punch
and this sort of tournament saw Chuck lidel win in the first round and lose in the second only to have Quinton Jackson qualify to fight Silva for the title.

I really think the UFC just baught PRide and dismanteled it with no regard for revenue or the fans in JApan or anywere else in the world.
For 10 years PRide fed the asian fans with MMA and the UFC chose to ignore this market which had more fans at any single Pride event then any UFC event ever, so from a buisness point of view that doesnt really make sense. Also Pride was the largest grossing MMA organisation in the world so why would the ufc completely ignore there premotional packaging merchandise sale and just burn the company down it just doesnt make sense.

Can anyone explain to me why the UFC are choosing to ignore an already lucrative market with a larger existing fan base and instead choosing to pursue the american and european markets when they could easily have already sown up the asian market .
Instead they have left this market open to pretenders like M-1 and dont think for one minute that M1 are going to let the asian market just sit there with an estimated 49 thousand fans in attendance at Prides Fianl event in the Osaka Dome a number that the UFC can currently only dream of.
I know this sounds crazy but why ignore this whole thing why should we as fans have to sufuer for the sheer ignorence of the UFC managment. If you liked PRide or not is niether here nor there PRide had a broader fan base and a much wider Fighter Base and at the same time Dana white thinks that by taking in only a handfull of PRide fighters to beef up the ufc ranks this will be enough .
UFC had the world at its feet and it threw it away we could have had two organisations whith single managment based on both sides of the world bringing fighters from for all styles of fighting and all countries into one singuler rules competition in the octagon we could have had twice the number of events twice the numbr of matches and still only one champion per wieght class with quallifing matches held on both sides of the world then and only then would we have truelly known who was the best.

But instead we get the familier UFC format Dana white playing God and champions that only defend there belts every 12 months or so due to reality shows, well i love TUF but for god sake who wouldnt prefare to see Forest and Quinton Jackson fight have a winner and get them in the ring with Chuck/ Wanderlie.
Instead we get a reality t.v show for 12 weeks get to see quinton and forest growl at each other and then fight next year some time .
In what organisation does a champion hold onto his belt by doing premotional work instead of fighting.AKA MATT Serra he had a great win over GSP and shocked the world but by the time he fights again he will probaly have held the belt for a record amount of time , could you see chuck liddel and Dana having the conversation about LIddel not getting a title shot coz the champs busy for about 8 months with a t.v. show organiosed by Dana ,
I dont think this is really fare .
Gsp should have gotten his re-match or Matt Huges or BJ Penn or someone buyt instead we get Serra no title defense for moths then does TUF and thengets injured I know its not his fault but how can Dana and the UFC justify doing the same thing again with Rampage is he a fighter or t.v. presenter last i checked he had gold around his waist but no matter what happens at ufc 79 niether fighter get a crack at him for another 8 maybe 10 months at that just aint right.

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" YOU KNOCK OUT "

Last edited by immortal : 12-26-2007 at 06:12 PM.
Reason: loads of typo`s due to injured hand

You raise many different points, so im not sure what to say exactly, but some things i think are important are the fact that the people that ran PRIDE are the ones that were responsible for its downfall with their involvement with underworld figure's etc that led to them losing their tv deal and so on.

That is where the real PRIDE ended, the faith of PRIDE as the company we know it was in the hands of Zuffa after that, it was up to them what path they wanted to take when they took it over, they didn't have to say anything about keeping PRIDE as it was etc, but thats what they did, and maybe that was their original intention or maybe it wasn't, but for whatever reason, they couldn't make whatever plans they were making work, you can say it's all Dana/UFC's fault that PRIDE as a company is dead, but when Dana says the Japanese staff were hard to work with etc you can automatically jump to the conclusion that he's full of shit and he never had any intentions of keeping PRIDE going in Japan, or you can take a step back and look at it impartially without all the pro-PRIDE feeling running through your veins and think maybe the people who managed to ruin the company in the first place might not have the best plans/future in place for an American company to come along and seamlessly enter a foreign company/market and go to town with promoting for their upcoming events, maybe they realised just how ****ed up the company/PRIDE name really was with the people that count like sponsors, financial backers, tv etc in Japan, that they said hey this isn't worth it and cut their losses and took what fighters they could and dropped the PRIDE fantasy.

We'll never know cause we don't know all the details, but i think it's worth looking at how big a mess things might have actually been behind the scenes that a company that is still building business in the States might be hesitant to start pumping money into. And to also keep in mind that the bad guys of the situation aren't Zuffa, but rather the many shady characters involved in the background/financial running of PRIDE that got them to the stage of putting blind faith in a foreign comapany to take things over.

You mention several fighters that should be in the UFC kind of matter of factly, but you have to understand that many fighters contracts were up and the UFC didn't have the automatic right to several key fighters (including Fedor, Aleks etc) and some were snapped up by K-1 etc.

But about the TUF/long stints between fights, thats a different story lol, and not a new one either.

surprising statement Bonner426 Due mainly to the fact that Pride couldnt have been in anymore of a state financial or publicly than the UFC was when Zuffa purchased that. One key difference was that unlike Pride the Ufc at the time had only a marginal if any fan base at all were as Pride although Financial ruined and defaced in the press still managed to draw more fans to its final event than the UFC has ever managed to draw for any card and just in case you handent realised the reality of it all they also sold more PPV`s for there Pride Decade History of Pride documentory than UFC has ever sold for a live event and that PPV was just a 10 year highlight reel.
Just seems like Dana White got his dream Pride is no longer around and he was there to watch it burn and help stoke the fire....

Pitty its the fans that the ufc so loadly claim to love that suffer in the end not one ufc event in Japan since the acusition of Pride no MMA events put together by there american comrades in asia at all . Surely with the purchase of any organisation there was at least some fundemetal foundation in place that would have made an event under the UFC banner easier like arena`s, security medical support, acomidation and so on.
You cant exactly believe that when the UFC baught Pride it was in such a state that nothing at all could be salvaged but a few top fighters that it seemed the ufc wanted anyway and everything else was in ruin. Surely you dont believe Zuffa are stupid enough to buy a company in that much of a state that you get a few fighters with no contracts to talk to and absalutly nothing else .

Well buddy, Welcome to reality! In this place you will find out that things just don't work the way they should!

If you think its easy trying to run a seperate company whose name was tarnished in the press and was suffering finacially because of it then your more then welcome to try it!

Yeah basically. Pride was great, but for some reason the Yakuza rumors made it impossible for it to get tv. Zuffa didn't really have much they could do with it, they assumed with their money in place, the smear would go away, but it didn't.

The reason the Pride managment had to step down and the company could no longer continue to trade in its current form was due to the equivilant of an FBi investigation into links with the JApanese underworld.
It was highly speculated in the press for many years that Pride first event was financed by the Japanese MAfia (YAKUZA) or by individuals with links to the Yakuza and under Japanese buisness Law if a company is found to have any links to an illegal organisation or company found to be linked to such individuals or Parties then company must forfit its right to buisness and cease trading , all managment structures must be disbanded and the managment team step down forth with.

All though none of these allegations were proven in a court of Law in Japanese culture any links to illegal activities by a leading company is fround apone and many companies will distance themselves from said company.

When one of Prides financial directors was indieted for his connections to money laundering and so on it seemed to come to light that PRide FC as a company was wholely under the financial control of the Yakuza and that not only was the original PRide 1 event financed by them but also subsequent moneys to secure T.V. Ppv and also to make payments on fighter contracts and so on.

All though none of this was actually proven in any court and to date none of the PRide managment team have been questioned regarding these links the scandal rocked the JApanese Financial world and the T.v. channel which broadcast the events pulled out of its contract with Pride at the end of its contract which was 2 more ppv events. PRide`s main sponser Dream Stage was at the center of the whole scandal and no other company would enter into the sponsership role.All stadium contracts were to be seen out and not renewed and all of the finances of the company were to be closely scrutinised by the JApanese goverment.

Although the then owner and director Sakikabra could have simply moved the company`s center of operations outside of Japan and saught other sponsership for the Brand other than his own Dream stage he chose to sell the Pride entity to another MMA body in a hope that the Pride name would live on in Japan and the rest of the world.At its time of sale PRide had very few fighters still under contract , no main sponser as it was Dream stage entertainment that the main scanadal firstly arose from . no T.v. channel to air its broadcasts and what looked like a limited venue listing.

Prior to the scandal it was rumered of a merger between K-1 and Pride to produce the first MMA t.v. channel exclusively showing MMA and k-1 events with all events being held around the world in current venues and the finals being held at the k-1/ PRide arena in Japan this was unfortunatly never going to see the light of day as once the scandal erupted k-1 as an organisation distanced itself from PRide and a once great friendship Between two owners seemed to fade away as sakikabara was ejected from the buisness world.

Currently though Dream Stage entertainment has started to re-emerge from the scandal and has some minor links to fighters in Japan in a premotional capacity but the name is starting to re-emerge in and around the sports world in JApan so maybe if not in a current MMA styled event then in some other form Pride will be reborn again someday.

This is the way it was explained to me by a Japanese reporter who didnt really fallow the whole story but was aware of the media speculation regarding the company at the time of the scandal and also from reading and analizing several hundred documents and newspapers along with media footage and notes from across the globe.

It isnt really clear how deep the links went but it was cleaar that there was no way the company was going to survive the scandal. The merger was the reason so many fighters were out of contract as Dream stage was aligning its self for the possible merger with k1 although the company was in negotiations with several fighters to renew there contracts and also with a nunber of other companies regarding the merger and further expantion work had already started oin a possible world grand prix event fallowing the style of k1`s world grand prix .

All of these facts were pieced together along with others from media reports at the time buisness records which are public and from hundreds of interviews held with fighters and managment at the time immediatly prior to the scandal these interviews for various publications talk shows and so on were by different individuals linked to upto ten companies both Japanese and world wide which pointed in the direction of a merger and re-birth of a new MMA / k1 event which would from its out set have complete global market coverage and its own braodcasting facilities.

There have been several sides to this story and nearly every publication that covered the story has put its own spin on what happened but these seem and i mean seem to be the facts that run concurrent in each publication and i say facts because these evnets and conclusions can be proven there is a completely different theory put forward but until it can be proven these are the facts that can.

i got no idea why they killed Pride, i remember that short after purchasing they even had event schedule on web-site.
It's sure extremely sad that we will never see so many good/entertaining fighters... maybe we will over time, in different orgs and events fighting god knows who... it kills me when i think about it

UFC didn't kill PRIDE, the owners of PRIDE did. The Fertita's/Zuffa tried to revive PRIDE but realized it was too expensive. The amount of money it would have cost to revive PRIDE wasn't worth it and if it failed, could have sunk the UFC too.

I also don't get everyone blaming Dana for PRIDE's demise, when he had nothing to do with PRIDE's purchese nor its death.